


Our Bitter Darkness

by antiheroines



Series: The Eclipse Chronicles [2]
Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo, The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Future, Crossover, Descendants - Freeform, Drama, Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, grisha - Freeform, sci fi, stabby stab stab
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 06:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13921407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antiheroines/pseuds/antiheroines
Summary: Consider this: alarkling, slow burn.... but in SPACE. While they fight an evil regime together.Everyone knows who the Sun Summoner and the Darkling are: Queen Alina and King Aleksander Morozova. Together, they’ve ruled over the Empire of the Eclipse for centuries -- and with the power of technology, their power spreads even planets away. They are the greatest rulers of all time.Until the mysterious, bloody assassination that nobody can make any sense of, leaving them bleeding out on the ground.Then strange things start happening: the new dictator orders that all Grisha are registered with special ID chips and start disappearing. Special “camps” start up off-planet, where nobody can hear the screaming and the burning. Even Grisha children are destroyed, pleading their innocence.Alina Brekker is the distant descendant of a famous war general, but that means nothing when the authorities discover her Grisha powers.  On the run, unsure of where to go, she’ll have to make allies in unexpected places and discover things about herself that she never would have thought possible.





	Our Bitter Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> so this idea has been floating around in my brain for a little while and i'm super excited to share it with you!  
> basically, none of these characters -are- the canon characters precisely, but rather their descendants.  
> actually, that miiight not be true.... but SPOILERS.  
> this fic leads on from the end of Rift and Break, my other Grishaverse fic. However, I haven't actually posted all of that online yet. Huh.

**O N E**

_Out of the night that covers me,_  
_Black as the Pit from pole to pole,_  
_I thank whatever gods may be_  
_For my unconquerable soul._

 _-_ WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY, INVICTUS

-

She didn’t know when her life had started to turn to garbage, but it had anyway, like the slow decay of a wilted rose, leaving nothing but corruption at its core.

 **Alina Brekker** looked up into the emotionless face of the med-droid, cringing at its fake silicone eyes. A bland face blinked back at her. “Almost done?” she snapped, and if it had been a normal human sticking the syringe into her arm, it might have flinched back or asked her to calm down.

Instead, the med-droid only dug in the metal deeper. “Grisha contamination identified,” it droned in its flat, monotone voice, and she sucked in a sharp breath. _Contamination._ She hated that word. It made her abilities sound like a disease, a plague. Something to be wiped out.

“What are you going to do now?” Alina cajoled the med-droid, mostly for her own entertainment. “Smack me on a hovership and cart me off-planet to die in a concentration camp?” Although her tone was sarcastic and brutal, she had her suspicions that at least some of what she said was true.

It had never been like this before – at least, she didn’t remember it being anything like this. Five years ago, the Sun Queen and the Shadow King’s reign over the Empire of the Eclipse had ended, quickly and brutally. Even now, nobody knew how they had died; all that anyone knew was that only a few days later, Director Oretsev had seized control, shutting down hovercraft routes and destroying net neutrality so that now, citizens only saw his propaganda and government-approved information. A week later, the book burnings had started; and a month after that, it had become clear that Grisha were inferior subjects. That they were something to be exploited – or hunted. Director Oretsev had made that very clear.

Now, she shivered in the coldness of the setup clinic around her. It was a smaller one, in the Barrel district of New Ketterdam, and didn’t have to deal with as many people, since most preferred to go to the university hospital with real mediks rather than med-droids. It was only last month that the new laws had been put in place; every citizen had to report for testing, although Alina hadn’t been sure what she was being _tested_ for up until now.

The med-droid only blinked at her, the light pulsing behind its synthetic eyes scanning her emotionlessly. She didn’t expect a response, and didn’t get one that satisfied her.

“Please present arm containing ID chip.”

That med-droid’s voice was driving her insane, but now a hint of suspicion tugged at her. “Why?” she bit out.

“Please present arm containing ID chip. Grisha contamination identified. You must be marked.”

“Marked?” Alina’s voice was brittle. “What, am I cattle now? Whose orders are these?”

“New regulations from Director Oretsev order that all of the contaminated subjects must be marked.”

Alina looked around her – at the cool, clinic walls, the holograph blinking in the corner, the window that opened onto the magnetic speed rail outside. If she could just run… Maybe Nina would be out there somewhere. Maybe she could find Nina and make a run for it, like they’d planned. _Or maybe Nina’s already been tested and marked,_ she thought sullenly.

“Please present arm containing identification chip.” The med-droid clamped a cool metal hand around her wrist, sending chills up her arm. “If you do not comply, I have been programmed to call for assistance.”

Alina shivered and slowly – slowly – she let the med-droid take hold of her arm. A second later, she yelped; she felt a stinging, burning sensation across her skin, where the med-droid had branded her with a special kind of laser, probably Fabrikator-made. It was a single black circle right over where her ID chip would have been, and it would mark her out forever. Different. Cursed. Grisha.

“What does this mean?” she asked the med-droid, her anger faltering and giving way to fear.

There was no reply from behind those glassy eyes.

“What does this _mean?”_ she repeated, grabbing its slender slimsteel arms and shaking it. The med-droid vibrated, forcing her to remove her hands, and then it responded in a flat mechanical voice.

“Red for Corporalnik contaminants. Blue for Etherealnik contaminants. Purple for Materialnik contaminants.”

“And black?” demanded Alina, trying not to let her voice shake.

“Manhandling of a droid is against the rights of inferior citizens,” recited the droid. “Additional help has been called.”

Alina was shaking now, stepping towards the window; a low humming was already starting to echo in her ears, probably the noise of a security droid coming to help handle her – or drag her away to a Grisha concentration camp. _It’s too late now,_ she thought grimly, and raised a single hand, shining a bright light into the med-droid’s eyes. She’d figured out years ago how to do this, the exact amount of energy a droid could stand before its interface became too confused to bother with its programming.

“Red for corp…” the droid stuttered, while Alina’s heart beat faster and faster in her chest, like a wild animal trying to break loose from its cage.

“What is black for?” Alina half-yelled. The humming was right outside the door now, and she heard the low beep as they started to slide open; she could see the gleam of the slimsteel security droid beyond, its arms twenty times stronger than hers and equipped with Zemeni weaponry.

“Black for dangerous contaminants. Total eradication suggested immediately,” the med-droid recited. Alina felt pain rush in behind her eyes, but took in a deep breath.

“I have been ordered to apprehend,” bleated the security-droid. The mark of the Oretsev Stadwatch gleamed on its chest, too stark and vivid for Alina to look at.

“Well, you won’t. Screw this,” she muttered.

Later, even the human members of the Oretsev Stadwatch would have trouble piecing together what had happened from the surveillance cameras built into the walls. It happened that quickly.

Alina took one, two, three steps back; her hand collided with the reinforced glass of the window, and quick as the flash of a knife blade, her power shot out from beneath her fingertips. The lock was shattered in a second, and she hefted it up by the destroyed handle; another millisecond passed, and she had slipped through, sleek as smoke. The security droid was left confused without a target until it registered the open window, but by the time it was outside, there was already a train shooting over the magnetic railways, and its programming would not allow it to follow.

What the security feeds in the clinic lab in New Ketterdam didn’t pick up on was Alina’s frantic, hurried breaths as she vaulted out of the window like an acrobat. They didn’t show her sweating palms as she pushed her oil-black hair out of her face, or as she leaped onto the back of the train, her hands stinging from the impact. Her body jolted hard into the grey slimsteel as her fingertips closed around some kind of railing, and she vaulted herself up and over, her muscles screaming with the effort. Her mind was full of all the things she’d seen in the last few days as she crouched down beside a crate, bending the light to make her invisible to anyone who happened to be passing by.

And then she was on a supply train to nowhere.

Alina Brekker let out a long, slow exhale. Her head was spinning. Had that been the dumbest thing she’d ever done in her entire life? It was definitely a possibility, she mused, although she had done some incredibly stupid things over the course of her fifteen years.

But then again…. She couldn’t have carried on with the way she was living forever. She’d known that for a long time.

She’d only been ten when the reign of the Sun Queen and Shadow King had come to an end. All she remembered of the shift in power to Director Oretsev was that there had been so much confusion – and fear. The King and Queen had been the only people to rule the entire Empire for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and the fact that they had been assassinated was almost unthinkable. And now, under Director Oretsev, Alina was beginning to fear for her life.

Alina Brekker knew that she was the descendant of rich, famous people: Inej Ghafa, who had all but eradicated slavery during the start of the Empire of the Eclipse, and Commander Brekker, who had married her and controlled much of Ketterdam even before he had risen to his position. Because of this, her family had always been well-off and held in esteem by the Royal Court of the Empire; she’d even been to a few small balls as a child and seen the famed King and Queen, who looked much younger than they actually were. Then, at ten, her parents had been removed from their positions on account of Alina’s mother being Grisha; after all, Director Oretsev hadn’t wanted any corruption within his ranks. Her father had died in an explosion in the factory he’d been forced to work at, and her mother…

Her mother had been taken a week ago, when the new regulations had come into effect.

Alina broke herself out of her train of thought as her head snapped up. She recognized this part of the Barrel now. And the train was slowing.

_Breathe, Alina._

She jumped, hoping that the darkness beneath would catch her.

 

**Author's Note:**

> dun dun dunnnn....  
> darkles' POV to come next chapter.


End file.
